Naamah

by Sarah Blake

  “Like a god. For now.”

  “You were more interesting to talk to before,” says Jael.

  Sarai laughs. “Have you figured out what a woman is, Jael?”

  “No.” He shakes his cockatoo head. “Have you?”

  “Mmm. I’ve been considering it.”

  A female lion approaches them, pulling an ibex by its torn neck, letting one of the ibex’s horns drag along the ground, making a sharp line in the dirt before the body smears through it.

  “I find I am less quick to violence than the men I have known, though I’m as capable of it,” Sarai says.

  The lion stops and drops the ibex beside the throne and looks to Sarai, who nods at her. Then she starts to eat.

  “What violence have you committed?” Jael asks.

  “I have cut off a man’s penis who forced it into my mouth.”

  Jael whistles. The sound of the lion eating is loud and wet, and sometimes something squeaks. Naamah feels queasy.

  “Truthfully, I would have bitten it off if it wouldn’t have filled my mouth with blood.”

  A vision of Sarai flashes before Naamah’s eyes: Sarai, covered in blood and grinning.

  “When was this?” Naamah asks.

  * * *

  • • •

  TIME REWINDS. The lion takes the ibex away. Jael and Naamah move back from the throne.

  This time, when they walk through the desert, they come upon an Egyptian vulture.

  “Who are you?” asks Jael.

  “I am the voice of the Lord,” says the vulture.

  “Get the fuck out,” says Jael.

  “Wouldn’t that make you an angel?” Naamah asks.

  “Yes,” says the vulture.

  “You should name him,” Jael says into Naamah’s ear.

  “I am the Metatron.”

  “That’s not a name,” says Jael.

  “You might know me as Enoch.”

  “Noah’s great-grandfather?” Naamah asks.

  The vulture nods its head. “But I am not Enoch now.”

  “Do you know who I am?” she says.

  “Yeah, do you know who we are?” Jael says.

  “You are the wife of Noah. And you are a cockatoo.”

  “No! I am Jael!” he yells. “And this is Naamah.”

  The vulture spots a hyrax nearby. The hyrax freezes and begins to bark. The vulture freezes, too.

  “Are you hungry?” Naamah asks, surprised.

  The vulture doesn’t respond.

  “Vulture!” Jael says.

  The vulture looks back to them, but then back to the hyrax.

  Time rewinds again.

  * * *

  • • •

  THIS TIME, when they walk through the desert, the earth is slowly becoming the deck of a boat. Naamah begins to panic.

  “I am waking up,” she whispers to Jael.

  “No, you are in my dream, remember?”

  “Jael, come find me, will you?”

  “When I wake up, I won’t be able to speak.”

  “Jael—” Naamah stops.

  “What? What is it?”

  She turns to him. “Are you on the boat, Jael?”

  “What boat?”

  “When you fell asleep, where were you?”

  “It was dark. It’s easy to fall asleep there.”

  Naamah’s panic is rising. Her chest begins to hurt. “No,” she says to herself. “No, no.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Naamah. You are not real. I dreamed you, Naamah. Relax. Relax.”

  She crouches and puts her head between her knees, the dirt still turning to wood beneath her. Her ears are pounding. Her chest feels stiff, as if it, too, were made of wood.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN SHE CAN STAND AGAIN, Jael is gone. The dream boat looks like the real boat. The only reason she knows she is not awake is that now she’s the one who’s made of fish. The fish of her body come out orange and shining. The fish of her vagina come out red. All the fish of her swim into the sky, and together they bring on the dawn.

  SIX

  Adata comes back up the stairs. “Are you alone?” she asks, and Naamah wakes up, still sitting with her back against a beam of the railing.

  “Of course I’m alone. You are alone, too.”

  “You’re still drunk,” Adata says, and she sits beside her.

  “I am. And I just discovered we are on land.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know how I didn’t realize it earlier. The ship has felt strange under my feet for a while now—still rumbling, but like an echo of how it was when we were moving.”

  “How do you know we’re not moving now?”

  “I threw my cup over and it hit the ground,” Naamah says. “I heard it.”

  “Naamah—”

  “Yes! I heard it!”

  “What does that mean for us?”

  “Nothing. There’s still only water. You can hear how the wind passes over it. Who knew that sounded so different from wind passing over land, but it does.”

  Adata stops to listen.

  “What are you doing back up here?” Naamah asks.

  Adata takes a deep breath, unsure of how to start. “I saw how you were looking at me earlier.”

  “How was I looking at you earlier?”

  “Like you wanted to eat me,” Adata says.

  “No. I would never hurt you.”

  “I’m not saying you would.”

  Naamah’s too drunk to follow, so Adata slides her hand onto Naamah’s thigh. Naamah looks at her hand and then at Adata and then at her hand again. She sobers up quickly.

  “You are the wife of my son.”

  “I am. Because God said it should be so.”

  Naamah opens her mouth, but then closes it again.

  “Japheth and I are not in love. Ham and Neela are. Shem and Sadie. It’s wonderful. But Japheth and I are not. And we understand our situation. I accept my position gratefully. I’m happy to be alive and with you all. I will be a great wife and a great mother.” As she says these things, she’s arguing for what they might do next.

  “And Japheth?” Naamah asks.

  “Japheth will find happiness again.” Adata’s making a promise like it’s a trade.

  “You are sure?”

  “I will make sure of it.” She continues to move her hand higher on Naamah’s thigh. “I want to be happy, Naamah.” She’s in her ear now. Her pointer finger has reached her vulva but lingers just outside.

  “Aren’t you too young?” Naamah says, but only because she thinks she should. At this point, Adata can have anything she wants.

  “I am old enough.” Adata reaches the rest of her fingers around the flesh of Naamah’s ass, grips her while her pointer finger stays on Naamah’s edge.

  But Naamah blurts out, “I left a lover in the flood.” She feels like she might die, having finally said this out loud.

  Adata says, “So did I.”

  Naamah raises herself up and swings her leg around so that she’s straddling Adata. She kisses her. She kisses her down her neck, and they both slide their bodies down until they are lying on the deck. She pulls down the loose collar of Adata’s dress and takes her breast in her mouth, flicks her nipple with her tongue until it peaks, then sucks on it, swipes her full tongue around it. She pulls her dress back to cover Adata’s nipple, so it doesn’t chap in the night air, then goes to her other nipple.

  When her chest is covered again, when Naamah has had her fill of her breasts, she raises her clothing until her full stomach is out. Naamah runs her bent fingers, the flats of her nails, against the inside of her thighs. She licks her from the bottom of her vulva to the top of her clitoris, where she sucks on her.
Three times she does this. Then she raises her own clothing, lifts one of Adata’s legs and places it on her shoulder, then lines up their clits. Adata moves how she wants to from there. Her eyes are closed. Naamah knows she is imagining her lover. She watches Adata’s skin and fat and breasts move at the motion of their bodies and thinks of how Bethel’s husband watched Bethel.

  Adata’s orgasm isn’t like Bethel’s at all. Once she starts shaking with it, she pulls Naamah on top of her and continues to move her hips gently into Naamah’s thigh. And then it’s over and she raises a shoulder so Naamah knows to get up.

  “Will you want to do that again?” Naamah asks.

  “I don’t know,” Adata says.

  And Naamah is grateful she is an honest woman.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE MORNING, the family tries to understand why the boat has stopped. The boys and their wives run back and forth, looking over one railing and another, calling out what they see. But all anyone can see is water. More and more water. Except for the small patch of earth where Naamah’s cup fell.

  They collect all the ladders on the boat and fashion a ladder long enough to reach the earth. Each person climbs down and wades toward the little bit of land. They begin to understand it more, this odd, shallow place the boat has struck, rocky and hidden.

  When they reach the land, they jump up and down, testing it under their feet. Eventually Shem laughs. Ham splashes him, and then they all start splashing each other. Naamah falls backward, into the water, laughing hard.

  But soon there’s nothing else to do, and they return to the boat.

  * * *

  • • •

  BELOW DECK, a ewe is about to lamb. Naamah is excited; maybe she won’t have to feed the lambs to a lion or a leopard. She would be happy if the lambs could stand on the earth for even a minute before she had to take them back to another animal’s mouth. She thinks of the bears on the boat, appreciates how well they can survive on seeds and nuts.

  But then she looks back down at the patch of land, thinking, If the water is receding, will I lose my chance to see the angel again?

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN JAPHETH WAS YOUNG, he was so bullheaded that they wondered if he could hear at all. Naamah would spot him heading toward a big stick, certain that he was going to pick it up and swing it near his little brothers’ heads. “Japheth!” she would cry out. But soon enough the stick was in the air and the little ones were laughing, running off to find sticks of their own. When she yelled at Shem and Ham, they stopped immediately. It wasn’t until Naamah caught Japheth’s eye and stared him down that he’d drop his stick.

  So one day, when there was not even the slightest wind, Naamah decided to test Japheth’s hearing. She took him out to a place in the desert where there was not a bird, not a snake, nothing. She brought a bag filled with a flute, a lyre, a small drum, little metal pieces she could clang together, little sticks, anything that would produce an especially low or high sound.

  “Japheth,” she said, “if you tell me honestly every time you can hear a sound—if you don’t ignore me, not once—I will get you a whole bag of marbles.”

  “Really?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She sat him down in the dirt. “Now you stay here, and I’m going over here behind you. When I start making sounds, raise your hand if you can hear me,” she said as she walked away. “Raise it straight up.”

  When she was some distance away from him, she whispered, “Can you hear me?”

  He didn’t move.

  She started with the flute and blew the highest note it could make. Japheth raised his hand. She went down the notes, and every time, his hand flew up. She plucked the lyre, banged the sticks, struck the metal, hit the drum.

  He heard it all.

  She walked back to him with her collection of instruments. She crouched down, putting her face very near to his. “You can hear everything I say, can’t you?”

  “Not when I’m not paying attention to you,” he said.

  She nodded, stood up, and started to walk home, almost laughing.

  “Are we leaving?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t even look at him.

  “Do I get a bag of marbles?”

  “Yes,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  She listened to the slap of his sandals behind her. She tried to listen so closely that she could hear his breath.

  * * *

  • • •

  NAAMAH ASKS JAPHETH to wait on the deck near the ladder, to lower it when she returns.

  “Can’t we just leave it out?” he says.

  “What if the boat shifts and the ladder floats away?”

  “The ark isn’t exactly the kind of ship that shifts.”

  “Do it for your mother,” she says.

  “Fine,” he says. He goes to his room and grabs a piece of wood to work on while he waits. He’s been carving it into a fox with a small, sharp knife. When he comes back, he finds only a pile of her clothes; she’s already in the water. He lifts the ladder back up to the deck.

  Naamah starts by swimming with her head above water, long sidestrokes, as if nothing’s changed. Something touches her leg, and for a second she’s sure it’s the angel’s hand. But it’s a plant that’s learned to grow in the constant water. She’s too close to the ground here. She’ll have to swim farther from the boat, farther from the rising land, before she dives.

  On her first dive, she can’t bring herself to open her eyes. On her second dive, she opens them and the angel is right in front of her face. She screams and the film appears over her mouth again so that she really does scream into the water.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the angel says.

  “I see that,” says Naamah.

  “You slept with your son’s wife.”

  “I thought that might’ve been a dream.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say?”

  The angel stops to think. Then she says, “I don’t know.”

  “Show me something,” Naamah says.

  “Like what?”

  Naamah shrugs.

  The angel takes off, and Naamah follows. The sea has a tunneling effect, so Naamah tries not to look around, keeps the angel in the center of her focus.

  When they come to the climbing side of another mountain, they start to follow around the base of it. The water gets brighter, but it’s empty of life. And then she sees a manatee, swimming slowly, its large body fitting snugly between the surface of the water and the earth.

  “How? What does it eat?”

  “Algae, mostly. It would be much larger if there were more food.”

  “Is it alone?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  The manatee has noticed them and comes over.

  “Is it safe?” Naamah asks.

  “Yes.”

  Naamah strokes the animal’s side as she swims by, and again as she swims back. Then the manatee swims under her and bumps her feet with her soft back. Naamah laughs as she’s thrown off balance, the sense of balance she can have in the water.

  But then the manatee seems bored with them and swims off.

  “Is there anything else alive down here?”

  “It is mostly barren.”

  “Do you know what it will be like when the water’s gone?”

  “No. But I have been making something. A place for myself. To live.”

  “Like a house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it be ruined if the waters leave?”

  “I think it is deep enough.”

  “Will you show me?”

  The angel swims off again. This time she takes Naamah’s h
and. It’s the first time they’ve touched. Naamah expected something otherworldly, but it feels like a human hand. If this is not the angel’s true form, she has done an impeccable job capturing it.

  * * *

  • • •

  JAPHETH GETS TIRED of waiting and whittling. His little fox is as done as it can be without a little sand and paint, a few little whiskers pressed into the wood.

  He goes to find Shem and Ham, to ask them to wait for Naamah on the deck. He knows Shem will say yes. Shem is happy everywhere, and he goes through his life somehow knowing this—that he will be happy wherever he ends up. But not Ham. Ham will need to be persuaded.

  So Japheth presents them with a wooden board covered with smooth indentations, along with a bag of marbles, so that they might play a game while they wait.

  “It’ll be fun,” Shem says.

  And Ham gives in.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER SWIMMING FOR a long time, Naamah and the angel come to a structure that looks like it’s made of water, as if the arch of the doorway appearing before them is a trick of the eye.

  “This is bigger than a house,” Naamah says.

  “Yes.”

  Naamah sees people inside, walking alone and in pairs. She squeezes the angel’s hand.

  “They are dead,” the angel says.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  The angel pulls her on. “Some were not able to move on, were trapped in the water. I built this for them and decided I would stay.”

  “If you’re an angel, can’t you take them to where they were supposed to go?”

  “Only if I want to be found as well.”

  “Do they resent you for that?”

  “They don’t know what other worlds there are. They can’t tell whether one would be better than another. They live here now. That is enough.”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you like where you live?”

  “The boat? No.”

  “But you remain there.”

  “It seems like the only option, doesn’t it?”